Arduino Gaming Shield

December 11, 2013 | 00:00

Arduino Gaming Shield

The Scottish chip maker FTDI Chip has introduced the FT121 G-Sensor Arduino Shield designed for the development of gaming systems. It plugs into an Arduino Pro development board and provides an FT121 USB device controller IC (interfacing to a mini-B USB connector) and a 3-axis ...

The Scottish chip maker FTDI Chip has introduced the FT121 G-Sensor Arduino Shield designed for the development of gaming systems. It plugs into an Arduino Pro development board and provides an FT121 USB device controller IC (interfacing to a mini-B USB connector) and a 3-axis STMicroelectronics LIS331DLH linear accelerometer. SPI and I²C interfaces provide communication between the microcontroller in the Pro development board and the FT121 G-sensor board peripherals. The accelerometer axes (X, Y and Z) can be setup with full scale readings of ±2g, ±4g and ±8g.

The user interface consists of three pushbuttons and 2 LEDs and the shield is powered from +5 V, using a 3.3 V on-board regulator to power the accelerometer. The shield size is 53.98 mm x 63.50 mm and operates over a temperature range of -40°C to +85°C.

This comes after the news that FTDI Chip’s FT800 Embedded Video Engine has been included in Excamera’s Gameduino 2 handheld games console. The one-off price for the FT121 G-sensor shield is $24.95.